Joseph Doubtfire

MA Fine Art

Considering cultural, social and monetary perceptions of value, my research is the antithesis of the monumental, ancient/historic and meticulously crafted objects commonly acquired by museums. Instead, I explore notions of the small, the found, the speculative and the ephemeral. This inquiry is founded on the idea that the value of an object is not an inherent characteristic of a thing in itself, but a judgment based on particular, often individual criteria (Cummings and Lewandowska, 2000: 20).

The concept of value marks a complex mapping of how we think about things, materials, ideas and uses, and as such, within this research value is not discussed as a matter of fact. Instead a series of questions arise from the implicit comparison of valuable and non-valuable things.

Subverting the use of museological display, which has become synonymous with objects of a certain class,
my research explores the disparity between the artefact of cultural value and the found object of little perceived worth. In critiquing the institution, this body of work replaces knowledge with the not yet known, certainty with uncertainty, and the grandiose with the understated.